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Social exclusion is an overused form of punishment. It eliminates any chance of education or understanding on either side. Done often enough, and it polarizes e
by jeffdavis 7y ago
Social exclusion is an overused form of punishment. It eliminates any chance of education or understanding on either side. Done often enough, and it polarizes everyone.
- shadowgovt 7y agoI believe that is the point.
- goldcd 7y agoI think it's worse than that. "Cancellation" is often used in the same way the pillory used to be - making an example of one, as a warning to the rest. Whilst it's still bouncing around as a thing, discussions simply aren't happening. You can't query aspects of cancel culture, without fearing that you'll be next...so you type something banal.. you decide it's safer to say "N-word" even in contexts where you're directly quoting ... nope, I'm definitely not going to say it here.
- ben509 7y agoI think it's a vicious cycle. If you harshly punish people for saying certain things, you create taboos. That causes people to avoid discussing these taboo topics. Everyone knows that they're bad things, but there's none of the debate where you can practice fleshing out exactly what your objections to those ideas are. Then when someone says those things, you have trouble articulating why they're bad, and then you fall back on the threat of social exclusion.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- zozbot234 7y agoIt's a lot more than social exclusion. It's purposeful social polarization, functionally driven by virtue-signaling and popularity-contest dynamics. And this is just as true wrt. the "canceled" as wrt. the "cancelers" - https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage...